


the oath

by cirque



Category: Original Work
Genre: The Black Death, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:16:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27882854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cirque/pseuds/cirque
Summary: He’s already going to Hell, what difference does one more crime make?
Relationships: Condemned Witch/Executioner’s Apprentice
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8
Collections: Holiday Horror 2020





	the oath

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aunt_zelda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aunt_zelda/gifts).



Her name is Joanna. She is a pretty thing, perhaps thirty or so. She has the palest eyes, soulless and sickening. She’s a witch, they say, and she must die, as is ever the way with these types. But still, Alec thinks, she’s pretty. It will be a shame.

She’s half rabid in her cell, as far as he can tell. She’s pacing like some trapped beast, her bare feet cut to ribbons by the stone floor. It’s raining outside--when it’s dry, they’ll burn her, like the rest.

The priest has been and gone. She had no words for him, no final confession, and so he left her with a blessing that fell on deaf ears. Some witches are too far gone, some you can reach. Joanna is not ready to give in yet. She will by the end. They all do.

Alec wonders how many witches they’ve killed, how many innocents. He wonders whether Joanna is just mad, just angry, just confused, not a witch at all. How many women have gone to their grave denying that. Surely, he thinks, if they were witches they could save themselves? Summon some fell creature, summon the coven, summon a great storm to douse the flames and spirit them away to pastures new?

He tries not to think about it. But Joanna--she’s pretty, and she looks so very sad.

“Would you like a drink?” he asks. It’s his job to be polite to the prisoners, but not  _ too _ polite. He’d hate to be mistaken for a sympathiser. He approaches her with the wine skin, careful not to get too close.

She spits at his feet. Rabid, he thinks. It makes no matter to him: let her journey to hell parched if she wants.

“Suit yourself.” He takes a swig of the wine. It’s watered down and does little for him, but he needs to keep a clear head. Bartholomew said he’ll let him light the tinder this time. 

“Are you hungry?” he tries. Some women take communion wafers before the end, others gobble down raspberry pies and suck cockles free from the shell. Joanna, he knows, is no such woman. A true witch could sustain herself on magic alone, probably.

“Kind sir,” she stops pacing. She pants from the exertion and grips the bars of her cell with her thin, thin fingers. “Let me free. You’ll be rewarded in heav’n.”

“I’ll be rewarded in heaven anyway,” he points out.

“For murdering God’s children?”

He chews his lips. This type of thing is not unusual. They always try to bargain with him. 

“Look,” he says, “I’m just the ‘prentice. Bart’s the one you want to talk to, but he won’t listen.” Bart had a thing for the flames, said it made him feel divine, liked the way the women smelled as they went. He won’t let her free, just like her hundred-some sisters before her.

“He’s cruel,” she says. “He’s a demon made flesh.”

These are bold accusations for a woman in a cage, but it is nothing Alec hasn’t heard before.

“He’s ridding the Earth of scum like you.”

“Scum? What’s my crime, kind boy?”

He gets up from his tall-backed chair and crosses to the pedestal in the corner. There lies a book, heavy and black from charcoaled fingers over the years. He drags his finger down the page until he gets to the most recent entry.

“Accused thusly,” he reads, “One count of communing with the devil, one count of using the black arts to cause plague to fester in this, our very village. Sentence: to burn until dead, or saved by the Holy Father.”

“I didn’t cause the plague!” she protests, but this is a foregone conclusion. She will burn, he is certain. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Someone caused the plague,” he offers. “And you were new in town. Who else, pray tell, could summon sickness like so?”

“Sickness isn’t summoned boy, it’s spread. I no more summoned it than summoned the rain.”

“A likely protestation.”

“Let me free,” she says again, more desperate now. “Let me free and no one else has to die. We can stop the plague.”

“You wish to recruit me as your own ‘prentice? You wish to convene with me the dark art through which you seek to strangle our village? You wish to threaten me, so that I might let you live by some second-hand guilt? The villagers are dying because of  _ you. _ ”

“I didn’t curse them. It’s a sickness. And we can stop it, we can, if you’d only let me go.” She seems at her wits end. It will not be long before she tries to blackmail him, that’s how these things usually go.

“And just how do you intend to halt the sickness if not by magical means?”

She looks utterly exhausted. She rolls her eyes. It is not a pretty look for her.

“Medicine,” she presses. “Sanitation. Hygiene. Quarantine.”

“Magic,” he dismisses this. 

“It’s not, it’s  _ science. _ I promise, I swear on Jesus’s name, we can stop the plague.”

“Stop the plague yourself,” Alec says, “and mayhaps God will open the gates for you.”

“I can’t do that from in here!”

“Then Hell it is.”

She throws up her hands and resumes her frantic walking. 

“I can’t believe this is happening,” she whispers, hushed but echoing in the flimsy hut that serves as jail. “I can’t  _ fucking  _ believe this. They send me here and--what?--I’m just supposed to let an epidemic kill the whole village? I fucking intervene and this is the thanks I get?”

“Who’s ‘they’?” he butts in.

She scowls. “You’d denounce them as demons. You’d denounce this whole thing as magic.”

“You admit you’re a witch?”

“I admit that you have no other explanation for me than ‘witch’. Not yet, anyhow.”

“Elf?” he supplies. “Demoness? Accursed temptress?”

“Time traveler,” she says, and collapses on the floor. She must be exhausted, he thinks, she’s been at this for two straight days. No wonder she’s gone mad. It isn’t unheard of. 

She pulls her knees to her chest and sobs, pathetic, as if expecting him to feel guilty.

“Your evil words will not sway me, witch,” he says, though honestly he is feeling a little sorry for her. Madwomen get burned all the time, yes, but it didn’t make them witches. They get burned for hysterics after a baby’s born, for the monthly curse that sends them wild, for the shrieks they are consumed by once a loved one dies. They are burned for much, he knows, but he is only a ‘prentice, and Joanna  _ has  _ brought the sickness, hasn’t she?

“I’m not a fucking witch,” she cries into her mucky skirt. “I’m a doctor. I just wanted to help, is all. I’m from the future.”

He is not having any of this. He slams the book shut and comes to stand in front of her bars, unwisely close. If she should choose she could strike him, or grab him, or curse him, or anything. She, however, does not move.

“Doctor?” he scowls. “Future? You speak in tongues, witch.”

But she’s rambling now, even madder.

“Do you know how long I studied the dialect?” she says. “How much effort I put into flying under the radar? How many damn essays and presentations I had to write before they’d even  _ consider  _ greenlighting this mission? And the fucking bubonic plague outdoes me, in a matter of days?” She takes a breath, a ragged choking breath. “We were  _ this _ close to changing the timeline, this damn close. Everything was going great. I didn’t even mind that it was one-way, so what if I’m stuck here, it’s my job to save lives. So what if it’s the fourteenth century and not the thirty-first? Doctors without borders; I swore an oath.”

She’s acting like she’s forgot he’s there. Outside, the rain lets up and the echoes of it ring through the hut. The village square is filling with people, he can hear their chatter, the sound of children getting underfoot, the hawkers and the traders looking for any scrap of business. They will come for her soon, once they’ve built the fire. It will not take long.

“Look,” he interrupts her babbling. “Bart will send for us soon. Have you any last words? It’s not too late to summon the priest.”

“Let me go,” she says again, “And I promise we’ll stop the sickness. Let me prove myself to you.”

He must be mad himself, for he’s considering it. He’s got a Ma and two sisters back home, the littlest one abed with the fever and the boils. She is days from death, perhaps, but could this mad, odd woman save her?

“My sister Isobel,” he says hesitantly. “She’s sick. You can save her?”

“I can try,” Joanna says. “How long since she first showed symptoms?”

“Yesterday morning.” He’s mad, he must be.

“Is she coughing up blood? Are her fingers and toes gone black?”

“No.”

“Then it’s just bubonic. I brought enough medication to save only a thousand. I had to choose, you see, but it was a thousand or none.”

A witch, he’s listening to  _ a witch. _ “You can mend her?”

“Yes. If you get me to her now.”

The madness seizes him completely, because he takes the keys from his pocket and turns them in the lock.  _ Satan take me, _ he thinks,  _ she’s got me bewitched.  _ She walks to freedom, and God does not strike him down.

“The medicine is in the satchel they took from me. Where is it?” She is no longer crying. She is frantic, rushed, but focused. She is a clever witch, by far. Bart will sack him, sure as anything, but only if they are caught.

“It’ll be with the rest. We burn the effects later.” He opens the cupboard door; inside are a dozen leather pouches, saddle bags, the stuff of witches past. Joanna’s stands out immediately: white as bone, shinier than leather, a sturdy pouch some three feet long. She takes it up, hefting it onto her shoulder.

“Inside here are vials of antibiotics,” she explains, though he doesn’t understand her witchy ramblings. “One injection per patient. In case they do burn me, take these vials and push them into the skin of the sick. The arm works best. They’re sharp like a knife, but they won’t hurt. They’ll heal. Understand?”

He nods, but it’s a lie. He does not understand. He’s supposed to believe her potions can cure plague? Surely it is not that easy?

“Where is your sister?”

Alec leads the strange woman from the jail hut, around the back way where they will not be seen. Everyone is gathering in the square, anyway. If they catch them, they’ll burn him too, and mayhaps he deserves it. He’s loosed the witch, after all.

His house is on the edge of the village, down Tanner’s row and beside the smithy’s. The door is shut, a red cross emblazoned on the wood in minium pigment. The plague is here, it says. He pushes it open and ushers his strange new friend inside. The dog besets upon them, his woof a great deep boom in the small house.

Joanna gasps at the stale air inside. “Open a window, dear God.” she says.

He frowns. “We keep them closed, to stop bad humours getting in.”

“The plague is a sickness. Think of it as a tiny animal, very small. We need the good fresh air to come in and clean it out.”

He doubts, but then she is a witch. She begins opening the downstairs windows and the commotion causes Alec’s Ma to come down the stairs. She is red about the face. Perhaps she is sick too.

“Ma,” he says, but she scowls.

“What the devil is this? You’re bringing whores ‘round when Issy’s on death’s door?”

“Joanna is no whore Ma, she’s…”

Joanna holds out her hand for some witches sign for all he knows. She rethinks and drops it, before bowing her head at Ma. 

“I’m here to help, miss,” she says. “I can rid your daughter of the sickness. But you must have faith in me.”

Ma considers. She has ever been a serious woman but the sickness has unravelled her somewhat. In normal circumstances she would not entertain witches, but these were strange times. She nods, just barely, and beckons for Joanna to follow her up the stairs.

“You’re a crone?” Ma asks.

Joanna shrugs. “Probably.” She is resigned to it, at least.

They rise into the upstairs room. The beds are unmade and crumpled, the fire in the corner close to dying. Ma crosses and chucks another log onto it and it bursts up again, gobbling up the fresh wood.

“Here’s my girl,” Ma says, and gestures to the smallest bed, almost a cradle. 

Isobel lies there, covered in a thin slip, soaked with sweat, tossing and murmuring. Her throat and belly are swollen with buboes and her eyes are rimmed with red. She is too far gone, surely.

Emma is lying beside her watching over her. She has not left her side since it began.

Joanna drops her satchel on the floor and crouches down before the dying child. She pulls back her eyelids and feels her forehead. She opens her mouth and inspects her tongue. She reaches in the bag and pulls some strange white material free, and presses it to the buboes that curse Issy’s body, letting it sop up the blood and ooze.

“I’m going to give her an injection,” she says, at last. “It’s like a very fine knife, small enough to pierce the skin. It won’t hurt her, just a tiny scratch.” She retrieves it from her pack, a long thin vial like those of other witches’s wares. She sticks the sharp end of the vial into a small amount of some potion or other and draws it up. It works like a syringe. Emma watches, enrapt.

Joanna pulls Issy’s arm towards her. She presses the sharp end of the vial against her flushed skin and presses it into her. Issy rolls at the sensation.

“You said it wouldn’t hurt!” Ma protests. 

“It doesn’t,” says Joanna. “It just feels strange.”

Satisfied with the depth of the vial, Joanna presses down on the blunt end, forcing the strange liquid to go flooding into Issy’s body. God help us, Alec thinks, we’re conspiring with a witch.

Joanna sits back. They watch Issy as one, impatient. Her eyes flutter, but that’s it.

“Well?” says Ma.

“It isn’t instant,” Joanna says. “It’ll take a few days, longer for the buboes to go down.”

“I thought magic could cure her?”

“This isn’t magic,” Joanna insists. “It’s medicine. It needs to… bind with her body. It needs to spread into her blood and fight off the infection. That takes days, but I promise you, she will survive.” She takes Alec’s hand and squeezes it. He flinches. He has never been touched by a witch before. It didn’t even hurt.

“I should probably treat the rest of you,” Joanna continues. “You’ve all been exposed.”

“After that you should leave,” Alec says. He’s invested now, he realises; he does not want to see this strange woman burned at the stake. He has never delighted in any burning; truth be told it haunts him.

“Where will I go?” Joanna sounds desperate. “I wanted to save the villagers. That’s all I wanted to do.”

“If you stay, they will kill you.” Alec says, and Ma nods. “Try another village. But they’ll just as soon capture you for witchcraft. Your potions won’t be welcome anywhere, whether they work or nil.”

Joanna lets this stew while she prepares three other vials. When she jabs it into his skin it pinches, like swallowing a fish bone, but it’s not pain exactly. It’s bearable and it only takes a few heartbeats. Emma pulls away when it’s her turn.

“This is a vaccination,” Joanna explains. “It will make sure you never get the plague, ever. It just takes a second, just a little pinch.”

Emma offers her arm, but she doesn’t cry when it goes in. 

Alec has an idea. “Can’t you go back to where you came from?”

“It was only one way,” Joanna says sadly. “Think of it like a door, but it only opens one way. There’s no crossing back through it. I knew what I was getting myself into. I’m stuck here.”

She will never survive on her own; she’s been caught once, it’ll happen again. She’s clumsy and foreign and sticks out like a sore thumb.

“I’ll come with you,” he says, wildly. “We’ll go from town to town, saving who we can.”

Ma stands up, and drags him across the room by the elbow.

“You’re willing to join this madwoman as an outlaw?” she sounds exasperated, but Alec doesn’t see it like that. Joanna isn’t mad, she’s just different. Or maybe she is mad, that doesn’t matter, but she believes in her purpose. She has a mission. And she needs his help.

“Not an outlaw--” he protests.

“An escaped convict. Late for her date with Death hisself.” 

“You’d do that?” Joanna asks.

“Yes,” he replies. He must be mad. “They’ll hang me anyway. I’ve been consumed by the witch, remember?”

“Tell them it was a temporary spell, a temporary lapse of judgement.”

“I’m not having my boy go traipsing town to town with some witch who doesn’t even deny that very fact.”

“I’m no witch,” Joanna says, “But I understand how it looks like magic. Maybe it is magic, in a way.”

“Ma, please,” Alec presses. “She saved Issy. She saved all of us.”

“So she says. If you go, how will we survive? We need your income.”

“I have money,” Joanna interjects. “I’ll send you a bit each month, yes? I don’t want anyone to be put out.”

Ma is running out of excuses. She watches Isobel tossing on the bed, still dying for all they know, and maybe it’s the light but she looks less flushed about the face.

“Very well,” Ma says at length.

They pack lightly. There isn’t much to take anyway. A few days’s rations, the clothes on their backs, the potions in Joanna’s pack. He steals a horse from the Smithy next door--he’s already going to Hell, what difference does one more crime make? Joanna sits in front and he’s behind her clutching at the reigns.

“I’ve never ridden a horse before,” Joanna says as the courser begins to walk. She wobbles as it goes.

“How do people of your time get around?”

Joanna is silent for several drawn-out seconds. “They fly.”

She must be joking.

Ma and Emma wave them off. He feels guilty leaving them behind, but Joanna’s mission is his mission now. They’re going to save people, lots of people.

The set off through the village, taking the empty streets, and the horse shoes clip-clopping is the only sound besides the din of the crowd that waits to burn Joanna. Surely Bart has realised they’ve gone by now?

“Is everyone a witch where you’re from?” Alec asks.

He thinks she’s going to deny it again, but then she sort of shrugs, and gives a little laugh.

“Yeah,” she says. “I suppose they are.”


End file.
